Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday December 27, 2011 @02:01PM
from the end-of-the-world-nigh-monetize-now-now-now dept.

Velcroman1 writes "Generally, at the end of the year, predictions stream forth as to how this or that new technology will transform the world in the next 12 months. Just before Christmas, IBM announced computerized mind reading was just around the corner — sometime after 2017, that is. But on the whole, experts and analysts don't see a whole lot of innovation coming out of the U.S. anytime soon. Instead, they see sluggishness. 'We'll have to wait for consumer spending to go up before the 'flying surfboard' arrives,' said Chris Stephenson, co-founder of Seattle consulting firm ARRYVE. 'Bigger innovation labs and companies are holding back on numerous innovations until they can properly monetize them.'"

Apart from making the whole web more interconnected between different websites, web browsers starting to look and behave more like iPad, complete with push notifications and geolocation, and HTML5 ads replacing majority of flash based ads, the article also predicts that browser makers will start to introduce App Stores within their browsers. In fact, Chrome already has one.Facebook will also get a lot more seamlessly integrated with your desktop, including file system access, photo syncing and widgets on your screen. There will also be an increasing amount of HTML5 based social games and online cloud based apps that replace every functionality you needed desktop apps for. All of these changes and features will start to blur the line between desktop and browser and will also bring your social graph more closely into contact with your traditional desktop experience.

Permit me to respectfully disagree. I use a few of the Chrome apps, mostly like offline GMail and Google Calendar because I have extended periods away from an internet connection when I still need to be able to access these things. Chrome Remote Desktop is quite useful as well. Sure, pay-per-view stuff may arrive, but I doubt it will even become a major thing.

In the beginning it's free or really cheap... then you get hooked on it and then the costs keep going up. Are you like 18 or have you not noticed this general trend where the consumer is concerned?

If there is a way to exploit the consumer with technology, they have ALWAYS done so. Everything you do, everything you see, everything you eat, every breath you take, every move you make... it's worth something to someone and they will always do everything they can get away with to capitalize on it. The only areas which aren't being exploited are either prohibited by law or new enough that they haven't yet figured out how to best exploit.

Are you like 18 or have you not noticed this general trend where the consumer is concerned?

Are you like 18 that you have no self-control or disposable income? I have about 40-60 apps on my Android. I paid for exactly one, because it was a non-trivial app that I use every day, for at least an hour to two hours. The rest are all free. Exactly one comes with ads, and I only have it because it's a fun game to play with friends (I won't mention the game because I don't want to give extra publicity to the game, and because I don't want to admit that I actually support the company via ads).

Do some research on what you use, and you can live a nice, uncluttered life filled with useful apps that don't cost you a dime. And if you do find a particularly nice one, do the right thing and donate.

Then the poor schmucks making the app won't have to turn to the dark side to make a living.

In the beginning it's free or really cheap... then you get hooked on it and then the costs keep going up.

I was thinking the same thing earlier this morning when I was making a JE about games. Back in the DOOM and Duke Nukem 1 days, they gave games away, or at least enough of the game that it was a full game. When I registered DN1, they not only sent two more levels (actually two more DNgames), but a third, unrelated game as well. By the time Quake came around the shareware model was almost gone, but you had

I have to admit, reading that I kinda chuckled..."offline gmail" - POP/SMTP client"offline google calendar" - iCal subscription to google calendar or I hear Windows has some sort of "subscibe to calendar" feature

I just usually use these things in my browser, I hate having a million and one applications installed when I can just use one. I used to use the Offline bits with Gears in Firefox but that was killed some time ago. I just prefer to do things this way.

That's all I need. A browser that gives away all of my personal information so that advertising creeps can push sell a lot of crap on top of the web pages I'm trying to view. And on top of that it's going to make me use a very clunky "touchscreen" style user interface full of downloadable craplets rather than taking advantage of the keyboard and mouse that my desktop has always had.

Call my cynical but I really see all of this as the web going downhill. Sure, there are great new technologies that can make things better. But as with any tool, it depends on how you use it. In this case, it's not being used to make anything better.

Stop running MSIE, Chrome or any other browser from a publisher which might seek to make a buck from you. Best bet is an OSS browser which has been forked and rebranded and sanitized by privacy interest groups.

Facebook will also get a lot more seamlessly integrated with your desktop, including file system access...

The hell it will.

Am I the only person who really isn't keen on this happening? I'm not a luddite, but this isn't really my field. The way I'm familiar with the web and JavaScript is that it specifically has no access to the local filesystem on your machine. Someone correct me if I'm wrong?

It think they're talking about adding a widget/toolbar/whatever or standalone executable that interfaces with facebook.

One can only hope that it causes facebook to crash in some spectacular way that prevents it from ever working again. I wouldn't mind if it made Zuckerberg's shoes strongly adhere to all surfaces at the same time. Both are just as likely.

It think they're talking about adding a widget/toolbar/whatever or standalone executable that interfaces with facebook.

Well, a lot of users will already be familiar with widgets and toolbars that offer them cool features. They're probably enjoying their Super Smiley Packs and Free Stock Update Ticker Web Applet Widgets too much to care.

With our headstrong exponential growth of scientific/technological progress, I guess *not* revolutionizing the world within 12 months is sluggish. But we have nothing to be ashamed of, our.6 GTPY (Global Transformations per Year) is perfectly good.:P

What if consumer spending never goes back up, adjusted for inflation?I know that adjusted for inflation the median has had less income every year for something like 40 years.Also.edu, medical, car/transportation, energy, food, and housing costs have recently been exploding.Then add in "new" expenses. Very few people were spending $150/month on smartphone bills more than a couple years ago.Leaving less money for consumer spending every year.

so... those companies who wait, might be waiting a very long time indeed, like until they go out of business.

What if consumer spending never goes back up, adjusted for inflation?
I know that adjusted for inflation the median has had less income every year for something like 40 years.

That's what "competitiveness" is all about. Wages decline until they're just above survival level. This eliminates most discretionary consumer spending, and the economy stabilizes at a low level. That's the "free market" applied to labor. Your life will just barely work, forever. Deal with it.

So you're suggesting that capitalism desires that people have no money to spend to support the businesses that require their spending?

Putting that logic trainwreck aside for a moment....

The alternative is that the government will mandate economic controls and dictate what will be made, at what level of advancement, by whom, and to whom it shall be given. It would be wholly irresponsible for that government to spend on advancements that merely provide luxuries. The "people's" money should instead be sp

Wow. That's an incredibly... creative take on the article you pointed to.

The only aspect of "businesses collectively" that's even relevant in that article is the passing comment about increased fuel prices causing less spending capacity of the customers. This particular article is speaking to the sales of Wal Mart being a barometer for the spending of the nation, and they were noting declining sales. The CEO discussed how Wal Mart made some bad choices and reduced variety of goods rather than prices and

The argument is not between a plain colored scarf and a printed scarf (available from Target...

If there is no capitalism, there is no Target. That's the point. Theres no Starbucks, or Dodge, or Dell, or Best Buy, or Levi's, or CNN, or a million other corporations that provide an alternative to their competitor's products. More specifically there's no Dell and HP. There's US Computers. And US Auto. And US News. And US Grocers with a US Coffee brand available.

If there's no capitalism, there's no competitive market. Government controls what is made, and how it's distributed. Maybe it'll be efficient

That's what "competitiveness" is all about. Wages decline until they're just above survival level. This eliminates most discretionary consumer spending, and the economy stabilizes at a low level. That's the "free market" applied to labor. Your life will just barely work, forever. Deal with it.

There's a reason economics is the "dismal science". This is just an application to the individual of the maxim that marginal profit under perfect competition is zero.

Holy crap, you're either very young or you haven't been to a hospital in a long time. Ever hear of ether? That used to be used as a anasthetic in surgery. They used cloth and plaster for broken bones, hot as hell if you sweat. They never had defilibrators, OR monitors, stents, artificial joints, CrystaLens implants, MRI, sonograms, cochlear implants... no innovation? Congratulations on the most ignorant comment I've seen today, son.

According to some you blame the evil corporations that let you indulge in a glutinous orgy of spending. Then you turn to the government to explain how unfair it is that no sane bank will give you a loan for a house and demand that lending practices be legislated. You follow this with a bankruptcy claim that protects your home and assets (again, legislated this way, because you were taken advantage of), and retire on social security.

Never mind the mind reading. When the mind writing starts being used more (at the moment I can't remember when that will be) by forces up to no good, those aspiring for truth and justice will often find themselves in interesting and infuriating trouble.

The economy will contract from it's inflated value accordingly and life will go on after much worthless pundit banter and political grandstanding. If the contraction is drastic enough, there will probably be a global financial system collapse after QE-X causes the printing presses to overheat. Or it will increase and we will keep racking up more debt until we hit the same ceiling again. Rinse. Repeat.

I am really starting to hate the word 'monetize'. Let every utterance of it be a reminder why government funded scientific research is important. I know this article is referring to more consumer oriented things, but much of our current technological wonder (internet, rocketry, about a million other things) is a long byproduct of government research. Now before I get called a pink-commie-bastard and the like, let me just say I am all for capitalism and its benefits. However, the frequency of this concept of 'monetization' as a stimulus for development seems almost foolhardy. Call me an idealist, but I like the idea of scientific and technological advancement for the principal of advancement, not just for the sake of making more money. Again, idealist viewpoint. I know.

And yes I know that a demand for XYZ creates incentives for business to develop/produce/be competitive. But the trend is going towards areas of research that have a high-risk / low-reward ration being foregone if everything is free-market, and technologies that can't possibly be implemented without 20+ years of research will rarely have private/corporate money sunk into them, even though in the long term they could have a dramatic positive impact on the quality of life for the human population.

Or is it all about the money these days? Any hard-liner Adam Smith's here? Money solves all woes, right? Right?

the premise of the article is pure bullshit. if someone had a flying surfboard they most certainly wouldn't sit on it so that they could monetize it - they would be monetizing it already. if you look at money poured at research, I'll bet you'll find it's more than ever before. it's just harder to come up with something people need which makes sense, is practical and what people would actually want and would help people(and not just essentially be a toy, like a new way of toggling a switch).

There is only 1 things that politicians really want to spend on: themselves.

There is only 1 thing wrong with democracy: voters.

--

The rockets, the computers, the Internet, the phones, the electrical power and electrical instruments, everything we do, we do because we are trying to make a better living for ourselves. Tsiolkovsky developed the theory of rocketry, but until the private sector

People that try to innovate get sued, or stopped by widely broad patents/copyrights, promising new technologies never see the light (remember sixthsense?) because "something" gets in the middle.

A few recent examples just in the Android field were that android device makers have to pay Microsoft because using/suporting the fat filesystem, Oracle suing Google for using Java, Samsung get their tablets out of the market because their dimensions looks a bit like the ipad ones. Not saying that it was the example of innovation and new ideas in computing, but the kind of unbreakable barriers our current civilization built to stop any try to build a future.

How good would develop/be adopted be a new device that can't connect with anything else? Still, Microsoft weren't after linux, or after google, they went against anyone that could be successful trying to use that technology, taking as base something ripped off from more than 30 years ago.Regarding java and Linux, originally at least was meant to run apps in a vm, java was the most known language for that, but could had require enough changes to need something new. And Linux was a good OS to run that VM over

Because FAT is the lowest common denominator. If they went with EXT2/3/4 or ReiserFS then Windows computers, digital cameras, and most other SD card readers wouldn't recognize the filesystem. In hindsight it was a terrible decision and some custom roms already switched to EXT.

The risk of being sued for patent infringement is sufficiently high to prevent me from bothering. I wonder how unique I am in this regard.

Not very. I have five patent plaques on the wall behind me. For me, the risk is not being able to collect for infringement because of high litigation costs.

Bigger risk is if something I invented actually became significantly profitable. Then any well-funded corporation or troll with an overly broad patent could come after me, and I couldn't afford to defend myself.

And, if you could persuade a patent troll that your patent applied, I expect you'd be tempted to let them buy it from you so they could come after me.

Bigger risk is if something I invented actually became significantly profitable. Then any well-funded corporation or troll with an overly broad patent could come after me, and I couldn't afford to defend myself.

Start a corporation, pay yourself a big enough salary (we ARE assuming you are significantly profitable, right?), and then when you are sued, have your corporation declare bankruptcy and release the software as open source. All your money will be protected and you'll be rich.

There are a lot of schemes like this, be sure to consult with a lawyer once you start raking in the dough. Also, don't ask me to feel sorry for you, once you're a millionaire. I won't.

Start a corporation, pay yourself a big enough salary (we ARE assuming you are significantly profitable, right?), and then when you are sued, have your corporation declare bankruptcy and release the software as open source. All your money will be protected and you'll be rich.

There are a lot of schemes like this, be sure to consult with a lawyer once you start raking in the dough. Also, don't ask me to feel sorry for you, once you're a millionaire. I won't.

Take the investor money and pay yourself and your hoodlum posse a fat salary. The trick is to stay in business a couple of years to make it look like a failed venture, rather than outright investment fraud.

Another good scam is to sell financial paper you engineered to crash, and then short your own paper.

So the only way to have the patent system benefit you is to drain your own company of funds and toss everyone out on the street once the going gets tough? Wow. The future is depressing. Note that I don't disagree with you, but I find your notion of how to make the patent system work for you a particularly depressing one.

So the question shifts from, "Why bother inventing? The risk of being sued for patent infringement... "
To, "Why bother inventing? Someone else is just going to steal it, mass produce it, and I'll still be exactly where I am today after enriching someone else."

I have been sitting on an idea for a sweet app to target a specific aspect of the media, but am having trouble pulling the trigger on development because I will almost certainly get sued. Anything that does any type of streaming is a mine-field as we have seen many times here on/. My coworkers always joke when I get up on my soap box about patent reform, but I honestly don't think they are aware of how impossible it is to innovate.

So pirate it, then. Build anyway.
Like what Andrew Jackson said: So Congress passed a law? Let them enforce it, then!
Just keep doing it. Be revolutionary, stop pandering to the law which is corrupt. Do business anyway. Enough people do it, and the law will change. Or go black market. Worked with prohibition, didn't it? Create new channels to distribute your products and ideas, people will pay for them.
Ignore the broken, sluggish behemoth of corporatism and do work anyway.
I know, easier said than don

I don't think enough variants of the same system have been regurgitated [wikipedia.org] since they broke from the G1. Who wanted a cross-carrier device when we can enjoy buying another over-priced, locked device? Consider and enjoy the long, fruitful relationship we get when we're locked in to a 2 year bonded friendship with yours and my newest BFF.....

THIS.
I've met a fair number of very smart people who are so overwhelmed by negative media that they simply don't do much work. They're convinced we're all screwed and the world will end. They just don't care anymore.

'Bigger innovation labs and companies are holding back on numerous innovations until they can properly monetize them.'

lol conspiracy. There is no innovation because military and entertainment, the only two areas where any innovation was done recently in US (and mostly in the world) are already completely saturated with awful ideas being implemented at ridiculously high cost.

I have a semi-related theory about military costs. Have you heard about all the problems with the F-22, and how they're starting to have the same kind of trouble with the F-35? Notice a similarity between that and, say, the space shuttle? What they all have in common is a ridiculously inefficient supply chain designed to please the congresscritters at the expense of any semblance of rational business and engineering practice. Now, what would happen if we consolidated the supply chains, improving both th

Despite what consumer spending numbers might tell you, it is also quite obvious that huge numbers of US consumers are willing and apparently have the means to spend many $1000's/yr on iPhones, iPads, pricey wireless contracts, expensive cable TV services and many other "luxury" items. All that stuff adds up quickly to many $1000's/yr... so there *is* plenty of spending and disposable income around...

"partner and co-founder at Seattle-based strategy consulting firm ARRYVE, told FoxNews.com. "Bigger innovation labs and companies are holding back on numerous innovations until they can properly monetize them."

can't be any more bullshit than that! it's got seattle(let's all move to seattle and use slow modems), foxnews, douchebagly named consulting business and "they got secrrett techh in dem government caves!" all in one.

Because we all know that innovation stems primarily from the "bigger innovation labs", right?

Innovation comes from grass-roots endeavors, and always has. The paradigm is for an individual (or small group of individuals) to start a small business, build it up big, and take market share away from the big companies.

Big companies become clogged by process and moribund. They become "risk averse", preferring to sit on their laurels and collect rent from existing product.

Did anyone else catch the part about "hackers will target mobile phones", wow that's news. So from the whole article about the only innovation we can look forward to is from hackers attacking our phones.

We'll have to wait for consumer spending to go up before the 'flying surfboard' arrives

How dumb is a quote like that? Well in France they actually HAVE a flying surfboard, RIGHT NOW. Way for your first "prediction" to be completely wrong. I won't bother to point out the "news" source that would publish this kind of hyper-pessimist attitude, you can fill in the blank yourselves.

The thing about innovation is that it is, by definition, innovative, which means it's new and has not been done before. Hence, nobody sees it coming, because if they did, they would make it themselves.

I predict that in the next few years a product will come along which will change our lives, be enormously successful financially, spawn a whole subculture, become a cultural meme, result in a slew of spinoff products and accessories and make some people very rich. I should add that I don't actually know

I call bullshit on the lack of buyers for flying surfboards! They get a working flying surfboard and every 50 year-old and younger out there will pawn every Apple device immediately to afford a Norrin Radd fantasy.

Not sure about you, but while gathering my shopping for the Holiday season I saw or rather heard "Christ" everywhere.

There was a time when that were true, but with stores pushing gifts rather than the reason, whether you believe or not (which I do not, it's a pagan holiday after all). What I do believe is the message. It shouldn't be limited to one day/week/month a year either.

I think everyone but me missed on the big red flag in the troll parent: WTF should we defeat every other nation?! How can that be anyone's goal?? What kind of a fucked up ideology is that? If that guy/gal seriously thinks that and claims themselves to be Christian, they need to take a long view in the mirror because they are really, truly fucked up, no other word for that. Christian my ass. Sigh.

Why of course the only way to true godliness is the complete and utter annihilation of every country by one country and one ruler. Then, you will know righteousness.Oh yeah, if you don't believe in what your told, wrath will be released upon you. After all, any loving person invokes wrath upon their child for not believing what they're told.

Do not participate in the secularization of America. We are, have been, and need to continue to be a Christian nation. Through God we will meet and defeat all other nations.

Forgive me for feeding such an obvious troll, but maybe this is a good time to call attention to the fact that there *isn't* any war on Christmas.

What's actually happening is that the social leaders who cry "war on Christmas" are waging a war on diversity and an inclusive society. Their message is: if you don't subscribe to my religion and celebrate the same holidays I do, you don't count, and companies that take account of your diverse views ought to be punished with boycotts.